Three divers became separated from the vessel in a search and rescue exercise involving more than 50 personnel in Tauranga.

People from three different agencies, Surf Lifesaving, Coastguard and police, were involved in yesterday's exercise which focused on Inter-agency coordination and testing communications between the groups, says Sergeant Craig Madden of the Tauranga Search and Rescue team.

Craig is labelling the exercise as a success.

The scenario was based on three divers becoming separated from their vessel after the boatman had a medical event and the boat drifted several nautical miles before the alarm was raised.

The search teams located all three divers by 2pm.

'We got some learnings out of yesterday's exercise but that is what an exercise is about, identifying areas of improvement and learning from them,” says Craig.

'I would like to thank all the volunteers who gave u their time today for the better good of our Marine Search response.”

The exercise involved the SAR teams from the Surf Life Saving Clubs at Mount, Omanu and Papamoa and the Coastguard units from Maketu, Tauranga and Waihi Beach.

Craig says the exercise was very timely as it's the start of summer when there is a remarkable increase in the amount of water based activities, which inherently means more incidents requiring Search and Rescue.